JOY – Continued

Posted on March 28, 2011 by sac

I suck at swimming.  My children are both great at swimming and because I stink at it, I climb to a whole new level of pride when I watch what it takes to excel at this sport.  I have a few people in my life that think the student athlete movement has gotten out of control.  Always busy, pushed beyond measure, way too many expectations at an early age, a ribbon or trophy for walking across a field correctly, and I don’t necessarily disagree.   I believe in a balance of fitness and fun.  And sure, sometimes we go over to the excessive side while dreaming of scholarships, but we always try to stay in check with the overall picture.  At the very least, we have given our kids tools to stay in shape for the rest of their lives.  What they give me back is unquantifiable.

PURE JOY =

  • Watching all types of emotions skirt across their face within moments– nervousness, determination, dejection, relief, sadness, jubilation, embarrassment, fear….they are feeling so many things and learning to deal with each one as it comes.
  • Watching them take all the hard work of practice and lay it all out on the line.  They may not completely understand it yet, but all of the arduous weekly work builds into the performance they display for the screaming parents poolside.  I love to hear their coach connect those dots for them after the race.  Hard work rules the pool and oh yeah, it rules in life as well.
  • Watching them do something that is physically difficult and foreign to me is such a gift.  It reminds me that they are not little me’s, they are their own people, have their own gifts and they impress me with them every time I see them compete.
  • I see them learn that sometimes what you bring that day isn’t enough to be the one on top. What a wonderful life lesson….and how blessed I am to be there to hold them and let them know that I love them regardless.

Being a parent has some difficult moments, and I would be lying if I said that the days where I plan my run-a-way to a tropical island to live in solitude are nonexistent.  But today, and many more days, I feel so blessed to be able to marvel at the gifts we give to each other……and I know I’ll be looking back at these swim days with gratitude for many years to come.

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Grace

Posted on March 25, 2011 by sac

I was struck today with a passage in Elizabeth Lesser’s book Broken Open.  She writes about a friend that has a stroke and while in the painful process of rehabilitation, barely being able to speak sentence, likens his condition to getting fierce grace.  Not the bubbly, happy, lovely grace but the take the Ego out of your life, break you open, lose things, see who you really are…..grace.

This notion brings a tear to my eye.  These two ideas of Grace are but one in the same.   The awakening and glimpse into our souls does not always come to us in a pretty gift, wrapped in a bow.  It’s often times delivered to us on a heavy plate of vile brokenness and heartache.  Why?

I’ve told the story before about how as a teenager I watched my mother be served with ‘fierce grace.’  Within a little over a year, she lost her mother, father, and stepmother.  Finally, as a huge animal lover, on the night her two dogs were run over and killed, I thought she was going to lose her mind.  I hadn’t put the dogs away correctly earlier that day so I ran to my bedroom, feeling waves of guilt, fear and loss of my own.   I could hear this normally emotionally contained woman, moan and cry in pain.  Strong in Christian faith, she wasn’t backing away or giving in, but calling for God to meet her at the threshold of her pain.  I was only 18, but I instinctively understood that I was witnessing someone being broken open.  It was an incredibly heartbreaking yet organically human response, all at the same time.   Connecting this process of being broken to the word grace and grace being a gift…..does it then make our suffering a gift?  Perhaps that is left up to us and how we choose to examine the remnants of what is exposed in our soul after difficulty.  We get to choose.  My journey began when I heard the whisper to choose well.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you
Don’t go back to sleep
You must ask for what you really want
Don’t go back to sleep
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
Where the two worlds touch
The door is round and open
Don’t go back to sleep
-Rumi
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Love A Good Quote

Posted on March 24, 2011 by sac

“She realized that the only war worth fighting was the one that raged within; the rest were all diversions.  In this small space, her hunting miles, she was going to bring herself home.  Home was not a place for the faint-hearted; only the very brave could live with themselves.” -Jeanette Winterson, The World and Other Places

I know, a blog represents the writers thoughts…..it’s not necessarily a vehicle to highlight someone else’s musings.  So glad that I’ve decided to do this blog my way because I LOVE quotes.  They inspire me and spur thought.  Many years ago I would go into work a little early and post my quote of the day.  It was something that resonated with my feelings at that moment and something that occasionally gave me pause and made me smile.  I look at it not as lack of being original but a connection to others.  Our words, creating feelings and thoughts in others…one sentence at a time.  Of course, I still have all of these quotes…in a pretty box…that I pull out and read occasionally, and I will share them as they speak to me.  Feel free to share if they speak back to you……

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Joy

Posted on March 22, 2011 by sac

Verrado Mountains This Morning

“Joy is not the absence of suffering.  It is the presence of God.” – Robert Schuller

The older I get the more I find joy in the simple.  Don’t get me wrong, I’d have grandiose joy being whisked away on a dream vacation or winning a lottery…..but the every day joy that puts a smile on my face is coming from the simple, the divine.  Instead of list them all here at once, I’d rather give them the spotlight they deserve.

So, first on my list of simple pleasures…..ooohing and aaahhhing over our surroundings with my children. It’s no secret that the desert and I have had a tumultuous relationship.  However, in the spring we make peace, so hardly a day goes by that I’m not pointing out to the kiddos a beautiful sunset, an amazing moon, a deer across the street grazing and our flowers beginning to bloom.  Occasionally some clouds settle over the mountains, we admire the view all the way to the bus stop and I wish for my camera.  Thank you to my Roo for forgetting his backpack today because I had an excuse to grab the camera and the shot.  So fun to try to snap the picture, so thankful for the beauty, so good to absorb the joy and start my day with awareness….smile.



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Spring….It’s a New Day

Posted on March 21, 2011 by sac

It’s a new day and it is ours…….that was the first line on my wedding invitation 18 years ago.  Funny how we have a few important dates in our life and we await them with great anticipation or dread, live them in a blur and then look back on them for rest of our lives.  Graduation, marriage, children, death of a loved one.  These days tempt us to live in the past or the future.  What is different about today than yesterday regarding my marriage?  Not a single thing.  The calendar requests that I treat it differently and I certainly oblige.  Talk a little sweeter, do something special, remember the moment that we became a family unit.  But doesn’t every day deserve this treatment?  Everyday of marriage is choice, is it not?  I offer that if we put effort into the moment instead of the once a year, the result would be astounding.  The gist of looking at a calendar is to see the square box of right now but it’s really about being able to reflect the past and gaze into future.  As far as my relationships go, I long to make a calendar obsolete.  I long to live in the moment.   Every moment is a celebration, every day is a new one, every day is spring…and it is ours.  Now, go make the most of it.

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Evidence of Assault

Posted on March 16, 2011 by sac

Your honor, I’d like to submit into evidence today’s reading in the One Day At A Time In Al-Anon book to confirm that I am being assaulted with the notion that I am required to Surrender at this present time in my life.  And I quote:

March 16

“Acceptance and surrender are the two attitudes that open all doors to us in the Al-Anon way of living.  Yet they are the most difficult for many of us to acquire.  No matter how badly we think life has beaten us, we still cling to the idea that acceptance and surrender are a kind of helpless giving-in, a weakness of character.  Not so!  Acceptance means simply admitting there are things we cannot change.  Accepting them puts an end to our futile struggles and frees our thought and energy to work on things that can be changed.  Surrender means relinquishing our self-will and accepting God’s will and His help.”

I rest my case.

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Surrendering to the Fire

Posted on March 15, 2011 by sac

Three years ago I was a high school substitute teacher.  On the quiet days when the students decided to get to the business at hand, I would pull out my favorite book de jour, Steering By Starlight by Martha Beck and do a little self help work.  A long time fan, I love her direct and comical style….and she gives me ah ha moments.   I remember I was struck by how she explained how she and so many of her clients had to go through the “ring of fire” in order to experience large amounts of personal growth.  First you have to deny the Lizard Brain (the scared ego), then painfully sit in your fire pit of growth, and finally open your eyes to the miracles that will showing up in your life.  Really, Martha?  Not wanting to seem skeptical, I took notes, figured that this surely  was speaking to me because I looking for the perfect career and that sitting with a bunch of fresh 16 year-olds surely was “ring of fire” worthy.  All that was left was to wait on the miracles.

Ironically enough, fast forward to present day and I am assaulted with this very same message.  It’s everywhere I turn.  Just like in Steering, these little signs are dropping like manna in front of my feet. Signs that shout that the fire and all that comes with it, has arrived…..

Last year during an extremely painful personal crisis, I was given a Al-Anon book, not because my spouse is an alcoholic, but because I identify with the process.  My early childhood was shaped by alcoholism and because I shared that history with a friend, the gift of Al-Anon gives back to me over 30 years later.  It teaches to manage my own issues everyday, to stay focused on improving my own behaviors and have ‘death to self’ when it comes to surrendering to a power higher than ourselves.  Surrender.

Last month a friend of mine accepted an offer to go to a book signing and loved the author so much she let me borrow it and read it first.  The big take away of the book by Laura Munson?  Suffering is placing your personal happiness on things beyond your control and freedom is choosing to put an end to your suffering.  Surrender.

Two weeks ago I was given a book by a friend because the cover looked pretty cool.  Inside, I am reading about…..of course, a Phoenix Process in which a transformational journey begins when we allow a death of self to occur and through the pain, a rebirth begins.  Broken Open by Elizabeth Lesser guides people through short stories of those that have surrendered during a time of great difficulty in order to find that stronger self on the other side.  Surrender.

Last Sunday, message at church about….do I even have to say it?  Death to self in your marriage.  In order to bridge the gap of a relationship, God asks us to love each other as he loves us and of course…..Surrender.

First….Pain. Suffering. Fire. Death to Ego.  Then…Surrender.  No, Really Surrender.  Do it again.  And again.   Next….Courage.  Love.  Peace.  New.  Miracles.

.

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Nothing Like a Physical

Posted on March 11, 2011 by sac

Don’t you just love the Doctor’s office physical?

Need a tetanus shot?  Um, sure, I guess…..arm still hurts days later btw.

It’s easy enough otherwise…breathe deeply, say ahhh, breathe normally, sit up.

Then they want to get some family history…don’t know yours?  Come from health stock?  I’m not so fortunate on that front, I’m afraid.  As I run through the list of family members and COD, the doctor and I both start feeling the weight of the conversation.  One grandfather had a brain tumor, oh and actually the other one did also.  One grandmother had breast cancer, the other autoimmune and liver failure.  Uncles? Cancer…so far no one is making it out of their 60’s.  When the Doc winces…..you know the odds are kinda stacked against you.

I had that moment, you know, the I’m going to do better moment.  Gonna love deeper, exercise more, eat better, should I become Vegan?  It’s the moment that we as humans come across every so often to remind us that the time on earth is but a whisper.  But, inevitably we go on and get back to the routine, the grind.  I had been fasting so after my soul connecting moment I promptly stopped by and got a coffee and sausage biscuit.  The moment passed and back to business……but I am gonna promise to love deeper!  My clock may be ticking and there may be only so much I can do to prolong my life.  It IS within my power, though, to make the most of the moments.

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